Erica Verrillo's Blog, page 107

Top 5 Sites for Children's and YA Book Writers

(Originally posted on Blogging Authors, Jan 10, 2013 as "Five Best Online Resources for Children's and YA Book Writers")

Children's books are a burgeoning market. Only a few years ago it was possible to send a manuscript directly to a publisher. Although some small publishing houses still follow that policy, the larger houses require an agent. As a consequence, agents who specialize in children's books are burgeoning as well. Writers who are daunted by the process of securing a publisher are increasingly turning to self-publication, a field which is burgeoning along with children's book agents, writers, and publishers.

With all this burgeoning, where can a children's book writer find reliable, comprehensive, and concise information about publishing and marketing? Among the spate of websites that offer information about the world of children's literature, there are five that stand out as particularly useful. Make these the first stops on your path to publication.

1. Literary Rambles: Spotlighting Children's Book Authors, Agents and Publishing
http://www.literaryrambles.com/
Hosts: Casey McCormick and Natalie Aguirre

If you are looking for an agent, this blog is for you! Every Thursday this site puts the spotlight on an agent who represents children's fiction. The spotlight profiles what these agents are looking for, personal quotes, interviews, response times, what other writers are saying about their professionalism, as well as linking up their web presence – all in one convenient post.

Site features: Over 120 agent spotlights, list of agencies representing children's books, interviews, helpful posts, and numerous links to agent blogs, editor blogs and forums. Also included is an agent search by age category (PB, MG or YA). Be sure to look at the wonderful list of resources on the right sidebar.

2. Rachelle Burk's Resources for Writers
http://www.resourcesforchildrenswriters.blogspot.com/
Host: Rachelle Burk

This blog provides one-stop shopping for children's book authors. Rachelle Burk, a children's book writer from New Jersey, has compiled an extensive list of resources designed to help writers with every aspect of their careers – from writing tips to legal advice.

Site features: Helpful writing articles, Publisher/Agent Warning sites, Publisher Listings, Agents, Editors, Query and Cover Letters, Websites: Sources and articles about writing for children, Newsletters and E-zines, Online Forums, Critique Groups, Critique and Editing Services, Author Visits, Nonfiction Writing, Work-For-Hire and Freelance, Reference Resources, Rhyming and Poetry, Writing Organizations, Workshops, Courses and Conferences, Legal Advice, Contests and Awards, Teacher’s Guides, Book Reviewers, Illustrators and Images, Self-Publishing, Print on Demand and Subsidy Publishers, Electronic Publishing, Book Marketing and Promotion, Author Sites for Book Promotion, Books on Writing for Children, National and International Writers' Organizations, Blog List. Of special interest: Resources for Kids Who Write.

3. Writing-World.com
http://www.writing-world.com/children/index.shtml

Writing-World is an all-round resource for writers of every stripe. The children's book page contains a list of eye-opening articles.

Site features: The Art and Craft of Writing for Children, Picture Books, YA Books, Agents, Publishers, Book Promotion and Author Interviews. Of special interest: Specialized Markets.

4. Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators
http://www.scbwi.org/
Membership: $85

If you haven't already joined the SCBWI, now's the time! With membership, you get The SCBWI Bulletin, a bi-monthly publication containing the most current, comprehensive information about the field of children’s literature. The Bulletin includes the latest marketing reports; articles on writing, illustrating, and publishing; contests and awards announcements; SCBWI member news; and ongoing SCBWI activities throughout the world.

Site features (free): Comprehensive list of awards and grants. The “Find a Speaker” search bar is a great way to locate other children's book writers in your area (which is absolutely essential for networking).

5. Colossal Directory of Children's Publishers
http://signaleader.com/

The title of this site says it all. On the upper left sidebar is an A-Z of American publishers of children's books. The website also includes Australian, British and Canadian publishers. The ads on this site are annoying, and the articles are too general to be helpful, but there is no better online resource for children's book publishers.

Site features: Links to children's book publishers, articles on publishing, marketing, editing, writer's guidelines, manuscript formatting, finding a critique group, and “how-to” books.

Giving It Away

Giving It Away by Cory Doctorow

(Originally published in Forbes Magazine, Dec 1, 2006)

I've been giving away my books ever since my first novel came out, and boy has it ever made me a bunch of money.

When my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, was published by Tor Books in January 2003, I also put the entire electronic text of the novel on the Internet under a Creative Commons License that encouraged my readers to copy it far and wide. Within a day, there were 30,000 downloads from my site (and those downloaders were in turn free to make more copies). Three years and six printings later, more than 700,000 copies of the book have been downloaded from my site. The book's been translated into more languages than I can keep track of, key concepts from it have been adopted for software projects and there are two competing fan audio adaptations online.

Most people who download the book don't end up buying it, but they wouldn’t have bought it in any event, so I haven’t lost any sales, I’ve just won an audience. A tiny minority of downloaders treat the free e-book as a substitute for the printed book--those are the lost sales. But a much larger minority treat the e-book as an enticement to buy the printed book. They're gained sales. As long as gained sales outnumber lost sales, I'm ahead of the game. After all, distributing nearly a million copies of my book has cost me nothing.

The thing about an e-book is that it's a social object. It wants to be copied from friend to friend, beamed from a Palm device, pasted into a mailing list. It begs to be converted to witty signatures at the bottom of e-mails. It is so fluid and intangible that it can spread itself over your whole life. Nothing sells books like a personal recommendation--when I worked in a bookstore, the sweetest words we could hear were "My friend suggested I pick up...." The friend had made the sale for us, we just had to consummate it. In an age of online friendship, e-books trump dead trees for word of mouth.

There are two things that writers ask me about this arrangement: First, does it sell more books, and second, how did you talk your publisher into going for this mad scheme?

There's no empirical way to prove that giving away books sells more books--but I've done this with three novels and a short story collection (and I'll be doing it with two more novels and another collection in the next year), and my books have consistently outperformed my publisher's expectations. Comparing their sales to the numbers provided by colleagues suggests that they perform somewhat better than other books from similar writers at similar stages in their careers. But short of going back in time and re-releasing the same books under the same circumstances without the free e-book program, there's no way to be sure.

What is certain is that every writer who's tried giving away e-books to sell books has come away satisfied and ready to do it some more.

How did I talk Tor Books into letting me do this? It's not as if Tor is a spunky dotcom upstart. They're the largest science fiction publisher in the world, and they're a division of the German publishing giant Holtzbrinck. They're not patchouli-scented info-hippies who believe that information wants to be free. Rather, they’re canny assessors of the world of science fiction, perhaps the most social of all literary genres. Science fiction is driven by organized fandom, volunteers who put on hundreds of literary conventions in every corner of the globe, every weekend of the year. These intrepid promoters treat books as markers of identity and as cultural artifacts of great import. They evangelize the books they love, form subcultures around them, cite them in political arguments, sometimes they even rearrange their lives and jobs around them.

What's more, science fiction's early adopters defined the social character of the Internet itself. Given the high correlation between technical employment and science fiction reading, it was inevitable that the first nontechnical discussion on the Internet would be about science fiction. The online norms of idle chatter, fannish organizing, publishing and leisure are descended from SF fandom, and if any literature has a natural home in cyberspace, it's science fiction, the literature that coined the very word "cyberspace."

Indeed, science fiction was the first form of widely pirated literature online, through "bookwarez" channels that contained books that had been hand-scanned, a page at a time, converted to digital text and proof-read. Even today, the mostly widely pirated literature online is SF.

Nothing could make me more sanguine about the future. As publisher Tim O'Reilly wrote in his seminal essay, Piracy is ProgressiveTaxation, "being well-enough known to be pirated [is] a crowning achievement." I'd rather stake my future on a literature that people care about enough to steal than devote my life to a form that has no home in the dominant medium of the century.

What about that future? Many writers fear that in the future, electronic books will come to substitute more readily for print books, due to changing audiences and improved technology. I am skeptical of this--the codex format has endured for centuries as a simple and elegant answer to the affordances demanded by print, albeit for a relatively small fraction of the population. Most people aren't and will never be readers--but the people who are readers will be readers forever, and they are positively pervy for paper.

But say it does come to pass that electronic books are all anyone wants.

I don't think it's practical to charge for copies of electronic works. Bits aren't ever going to get harder to copy. So we'll have to figure out how to charge for something else. That's not to say you can't charge for a copy-able bit, but you sure can't force a reader to pay for access to information anymore.

This isn't the first time creative entrepreneurs have gone through one of these transitions. Vaudeville performers had to transition to radio, an abrupt shift from having perfect control over who could hear a performance (if they don't buy a ticket, you throw them out) to no control whatsoever (any family whose 12-year-old could build a crystal set, the day's equivalent of installing file-sharing software, could tune in). There were business models for radio, but predicting them a priori wasn't easy. Who could have foreseen that radio's great fortunes would be had through creating a blanket license, securing a Congressional consent decree, chartering a collecting society and inventing a new form of statistical mathematics to fund it?

Predicting the future of publishing--should the wind change and printed books become obsolete--is just as hard. I don't know how writers would earn their living in such a world, but I do know that I'll never find out by turning my back on the Internet. By being in the middle of electronic publishing, by watching what hundreds of thousands of my readers do with my e-books, I get better market intelligence than I could through any other means. As does my publisher. As serious as I am about continuing to work as a writer for the foreseeable future, Tor Books and Holtzbrinck are just as serious. They've got even more riding on the future of publishing than me. So when I approached my publisher with this plan to give away books to sell books, it was a no-brainer for them.

It's good business for me, too. This "market research" of giving away e-books sells printed books. What's more, having my books more widely read opens many other opportunities for me to earn a living from activities around my writing, such as the Fulbright Chair I got at USC this year, this high-paying article in Forbes, speaking engagements and other opportunities to teach, write and license my work for translation and adaptation. My fans' tireless evangelism for my work doesn't just sell books--it sells me.

The golden age of hundreds of writers who lived off of nothing but their royalties is bunkum. Throughout history, writers have relied on day jobs, teaching, grants, inheritances, translation, licensing and other varied sources to make ends meet. The Internet not only sells more books for me, it also gives me more opportunities to earn my keep through writing-related activities.

There has never been a time when more people were reading more words by more authors. The Internet is a literary world of written words. What a fine thing that is for writers.

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author and co-editor of  Boing Boing , a popular Weblog about technology, culture and politics. His work is available for free download at  Craphound.com .

http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/30/cory-doctorow-copyright-tech-media_cz_cd_books06_1201doctorow.html

The Children's Digital Market: Still Uncharted Territory

The Children's Digital Market: Still Uncharted Territory 
 By Gabe Habash  (originally posted on Publishers Weekly Jan 16, 2013) 

The growing complexity of the children’s digital market was parsed by industry experts at the Publishers Launch Children's Publishing Goes Digital Conference in New York on January 15, as panelists and speakers agreed that the transition from print to digital will not be a clean, easy movement and that things are still very much in the experimentation stage. The day-long conference kicked off with the presentation of the findings from a recent study by Bowker that found that among children, there has been a marked decline in bookstore and library influence as a source of recommendation and acquisition, and that many purchases are instead migrating online to vendors like Amazon. The study is part of Bowker’s Understanding the Children’s Book Consumer in the Digital Age.

Friends and family overtook bookstore browsing and libraries as the top influencers, painting the picture of the children’s book market as a highly local word-of-mouth economy. The erosion of libraries and bookstores may be misleading, though, as Gretchen Caserotti of the Darien Public Library used a case study involving Adam Gidwitz’s A Tale Dark and Grimm, which Caserotti said the library system recommended to the local school systems, and that based on the library’s recommendation (and a local award for the book), the school system widely assigned the book in classrooms. When asked how they heard about Grimm, students would most often respond that they heard of it through friends, even though the book was largely implemented because of the push of the library.

The Bowker study had some surprises, most notably: 84% of YA books were purchased by consumers 18 or older – and a full 35% of YA books were bought by consumers aged 18-29, by far the largest demographic. The second-largest demographic was age 30-44; within that segment, dispelling the notion that the YA books are gifts or purchases for teens, fully 80% of respondents reported “they bought the book for themselves.”

In all areas of media use with the exception of video games, girls outpaced boys, both in terms of behavior and in their willingness to engage in discussion.

On the topic of digital, a surprising shift back to print was seen since spring 2012, and for the year e-book adoption growth was flat among teens, with some evidence that teens liked print more in the fall than they did in the spring. One possible reason for this, according to Bookigee CEO Kristen McLean, could be the “shininess” wearing off new devices and, as people become accustomed to what digital can offer, they are making more nuanced decisions regarding reading habits.

Supporting the Bowker finding about teen attitudes toward digital, members of Nook’s digital team shared the fact from a 2012 Figment survey that said 35% of teens are reluctant to embrace digital reading. Kashif Zafar of Nook also revealed that the majority of Nook e-books are purchased on a device and that that number is growing. Further, he said, customers are very aware of price point and level of interactivity, with a gravitation toward full read-and-play titles (the highest level of interactivity).

Perhaps the most eye-opening statistic of the day was that the unit share for online sellers is 41%, but the discovery share for online sellers is 5%. The figure was presented by Peter Hildick-Smith of Codex Group, who stated that the disparity indicates that e-tailers need new strategies when it comes to discovery. A study done by Codex Group in December 2012 found that schools are still the greatest discovery source for books for children, with the category “schools, professionals (teachers, librarians, etc.), and groups” at 28% being the most common answer by parents asked where they found out about the last book they purchased for their child. Within that category, book fairs were the biggest contributor. After that category, 23% of respondents said they found out about the book from their child, 20% said a physical bookseller, and 12% said through digital. And to further show digital’s lagging influence in the children’s sphere, 81% said the recommendation for the book came “in person,” and only 5% said it came through social media.

One area where digital children’s books is beginning to make headway is in the school systems. Todd Brekhus of myON, a digital reading platform that doubled its revenue and number of titles in the last year, estimated that the education technology is a $7.76 billion market, and that it’s a great opportunity for publishers to match the right titles with the right readers. Terri Lynn Soutor of Brain Hive, another growing digital reading platform for schools, stated that there’s been an 83% increase in the number of e-books on a per school average nationwide, and that $42 million was spent on e-books in the U.S. last year. Soutor echoed Brekhus’s point regarding the opportunity that the still largely untapped education technology market holds for publishers, stressing that it’s a low risk proposition and there’s no product development investment.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/55521-why-the-children-s-digital-market-is-still-uncharted-territory.html

How I Became a Best-Selling Author Self-publishing is upending the book industry. One woman's unlikely road to a hit novel.

(This fascinating article was written by Alexandra Alter, Wall Street Journal, Dec 9, 2011)

This summer, Darcie Chan's debut novel became an unexpected hit. It has sold more than 400,000 copies and landed on the best-seller lists alongside brand-name authors like Michael Connelly, James Patterson and Kathryn Stockett.

It's been a success by any measure, save one. Ms. Chan still hasn't found a publisher.

Five years ago, Ms. Chan's novel, "The Mill River Recluse," which tells the story of a wealthy Vermont widow who bestows her fortune on town residents who barely knew her, would have languished in a drawer. A dozen publishers and more than 100 literary agents rejected it.

"Nobody was willing to take a chance," says Ms. Chan, a 37-year-old lawyer who drafts environmental legislation. "It was too much of a publishing risk."

This past May, Ms. Chan decided to digitally publish it herself, hoping to gain a few readers and some feedback. She bought some ads on Web sites targeting e-book readers, paid for a review from Kirkus Reviews, and strategically priced her book at 99 cents to encourage readers to try it. She's now attracting bids from foreign imprints, movie studios and audio-book publishers, without selling a single copy in print.

The story of how Ms. Chan joined the ranks of best sellers is as much a tale of digital marketing savvy and strategic pricing as one of artistic triumph. Her breakout signals a monumental shift in the way books are packaged, priced and sold in the digital era. Just as music executives have been sidestepped by YouTube sensations and indie iTunes hits, book publishers are losing ground to independent authors and watching their powerful status as literary gatekeepers wither.

Self-publishing has long been derided as a last resort for authors who lack the talent or savvy to hack it in the publishing business. But it has gained a patina of legitimacy as a growing number of self-published authors land on best-seller lists. Last year, 133,036 self-published titles were released, up from 51,237 in 2006, according to Bowker, a company that tracks publishing trends.

A handful of self-published authors have achieved blockbuster status, selling more than a million copies of their books on the Kindle. While they represent a tiny minority of independent authors, the ranks of the successful are growing. Thirty authors have sold more than 100,000 copies of their books through Amazon's Kindle self-publishing program, and a dozen have sold more than 200,000 copies, according to Amazon. The program, which Amazon launched in 2007, allows authors to upload their books directly to Amazon's Kindle store, set their own prices and publish in multiple languages. Barnes & Noble followed suit in 2010 with a similar program for its Nook e-reader.

Self-published titles have been buoyed by an explosion in digital book sales. E-book sales totaled $878 million in 2010, compared to $287 million in 2009, according to the Association of American Publishers. Some analysts project that e-book sales will pass $2 billion in 2013.

The march of self-published authors has put publishers and literary agents on guard. Publishing houses like Penguin and Perseus have recently launched their own digital self-publishing programs in an effort to capture a slice of the mushrooming market. Some agents, including Scott Waxman, have started their own digital imprints.

Digital self-publishing still has serious drawbacks. Though e-books are the fastest-growing segment of the book market, they still make up less than 10% of overall trade book sales, according to the Association of American Publishers. Book reviewers tend to ignore self-published works, and brick-and-mortar bookstores have long shunned them. And very few authors have a marketing and advertising budget equal to a publisher's.

Several successful self-published authors have gone on to cut deals with major publishers. After selling around 1.5 million digital copies of her books on her own, 27-year-old fantasy writer Amanda Hocking signed with St. Martin's Press. She won a $2 million advance for a new four-book fantasy series called "Watersong"; St. Martin's will also reprint her best-selling self-published "Trylle" trilogy about attractive teenage trolls.

Self-published thriller and Western writer John Locke, whose 13 books have sold more than 1.7 million digital copies, signed an unusual contract with Simon & Schuster in August. The publishing house will print and distribute his books—the first title comes out next month—while allowing Mr. Locke to remain as the publisher. Mr. Locke is paying for the printing, shipping and marketing costs himself, according to his agent. The print editions, which will sell as mass-market paperbacks for $4.99, won't be edited. "The opportunity to get into bookstores, Targets, Wal-Marts, Costcos, airports—I can't do that as an independent author," Mr. Locke says.

J.A. Konrath, a mystery writer who has sold 400,000 digital copies of his self-published books, earning some $500,000 a year, signed a contract with Amazon's new mystery imprint to publish his novel "Stirred," co-written with Blake Crouch, digitally and in print. It recently hit No. 1 on the Kindle top-100 list. Mr. Konrath says he was won over by Amazon's powerful marketing machinery. "They can really blow my books up," he says.

Ms. Chan lives in a spacious, two-story house on a quiet street in Cortlandt Manor, N.Y. She and her husband, Timothy Chan, met in high school, at a national science competition. They reunited in Maryland, where he attended medical school and she completed a law degree at the University of Baltimore.

For the past 15 years, she's worked as an attorney drafting legislation concerning clean air and water, highway infrastructure and climate change. She squeezes in a couple of hours of writing each night.

She started writing fiction in 2002, when she suddenly had a lot of time on her hands. Her husband, an oncologist and cancer researcher at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, was spending long hours at the hospital at the beginning of his residency, so she spent her nights alone writing.

She came up with the story of a wealthy, agoraphobic Vermont widow who makes anonymous gifts to the townspeople who ignore and fear her. Ms. Chan says she was inspired by the true story of a resident of Paoli, the small Indiana town where she grew up. "The Mill River Recluse" takes place in a fictional Vermont town with a quirky cast of characters—a kleptomaniac priest with a spoon fetish, a dotty woman who tries to sell her neighbors love potions, a bad cop whose off-duty hobbies include stalking and arson.

The novel took her 2½ years to write. After seeking feedback from family and friends, she sent queries to more than 100 literary agents. Most rejected it as a tough sell. "It didn't really fit any genre," Ms. Chan says. "It has elements of romance, suspense, mystery, but it falls into the catch-all category of literary fiction, and of course that's the most difficult to sell."

She finally landed an agent, Laurie Liss at Sterling Lord Literistic in New York, who represents cable-news host Rachel Maddow. Ms. Liss submitted the manuscript to a dozen publishers, all of whom turned it down. Ms. Chan stashed the manuscript in a drawer, and buried herself in her legislative work.

Five years passed. Then, this past spring, she started reading about the rise of e-book sales and authors who had successfully self published, and decided to give it a shot. She fashioned a cover image out of a photograph her sister took of a mansion in Paoli, and she and her husband used Photoshop to add some gloomy ambience. Then she nervously uploaded her manuscript to Amazon's Kindle self-publishing program. She sold a trickle of copies. A few weeks later, she started selling it on Barnes & Noble's Nook and through SmashWords, a self-publishing program that distributes to major e-book retailers including Apple's iBookstore, Sony and Kobo. Her first royalty check from Amazon was for $39.

She noticed that a lot of popular e-books were priced at 99 cents, and immediately dropped her price from $2.99 to 99 cents. The cut would slash potential royalties—Amazon pays 35% royalties for books that cost less than $2.99, compared with 70% for books that cost $2.99 to $9.99. But sales picked up immediately. "I did that to encourage people to give it a chance," she says. "I saw it as an investment in my future as a writer." The strategy worked. Several reviewers on Amazon said they bought the book because it was 99 cents, then ended up liking it.

She checked her sales several times a day, obsessively refreshing her Amazon page. In the first month, it sold 100 copies. When Ms. Chan saw the sales figure, she danced in her kitchen with her husband and toddler.

"We were saying, 'Wow, this is really cool. What if you sell 1,000? That would be awesome,' " her husband recalls.

Then, at the end of June, "The Mill River Recluse" got a mention on a site called Ereader News Today, which posts tips for Kindle readers. Over the next two days, it sold another 600 copies. Ms. Chan realized she might be able to drive sales herself. She spent about $1,000 on marketing, buying banner ads on websites and blogs devoted to Kindle readers and a promotional spot on goodreads.com, a book-recommendation site with more than six million members.

After learning that self-published authors can pay to have their books reviewed by some sites, she paid $35 for a review from IndieReader.com (IndieReader no longer offers paid reviews). She paid $575 for an expedited review from Kirkus Reviews, a respected book-review journal and website. The review service, which Kirkus launched in 2005, gives self-published authors the option to keep the review private if it's negative. Ms. Chan decided to have hers posted on their website. Kirkus called the novel "a comforting book about the random acts of kindness that hold communities together." She used blurbs from the reviews on her Amazon and Barnes & Noble pages. "I hoped it would lend some credibility," she says. "Most other reviewers won't touch it."

Sales kept climbing. In July, it sold more than 14,000 copies. That month, it was featured on two of the biggest sites for e-book readers, generating a surge of new sales. In August, it sold more than 77,000 copies and hit the New York Times and USA Today e-book best-seller lists; it later landed on the Wall Street Journal list. In September, it sold more than 159,000 copies. To date, she has sold around 413,000 copies.

Ms. Chan and her agent decided to resubmit the novel to all the major imprints, citing robust sales figures and rave online reviews. Some publishers have responded warily. A representative of one publishing house feared the book had "run its course," Ms. Liss recalls. Others worried about the novel's bargain basement price, arguing that an e-book that sells for 99 cents likely won't command a typical hardcover price of around $26.

A few major publishers made offers, but none matched the digital royalty rates of 35% to 40% that Ms. Chan makes on her own through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Typically, most publishers offer print royalties of 10% to 15% and digital royalties of 25%. Simon & Schuster offered to act as a distributor, but Ms. Chan wants the book to be professionally edited and marketed.

Ms. Liss says that the offers from U.S. publishers so far don't improve much on what Ms. Chan is making on her own. She's made around $130,000 before taxes—substantially more than a standard advance for the average debut novelist—and she's getting a steady stream of royalties every month. "I told Darcie, at this point you're printing money. They're not. Go with God, we'll sell the second book," Ms. Liss says.

In the meantime, there's interest from other corners of the industry. Multiple audio-book publishers have made offers. Six film studios have inquired about movie rights. Two foreign publishers bid on the book. Ms. Chan is holding off on such deals, for fear they might sabotage a potential contract with a domestic publisher.

Ms. Chan still wants to see her book in print. Several librarians have contacted her seeking print copies after patrons requested her book. "I have people writing me begging me for a hard copy, book clubs and libraries calling me, and I don't have a hard copy to provide for them," she says.

Ms. Liss advised her to work on a sequel set in the same town, with some of the same characters. Ms. Chan has written two chapters. While she would love to write full time, for now, she still sees writing as more of a hobby. When people ask her what she does for a living, she says she's a lawyer. But she's still holding out hope that a publisher will buy "The Mill River Recluse," edit it and sell it in brick-and-mortar stores.

"The hardest part for me is uncertainty," she says. "I deal better with rejection than uncertainty."

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/how-i-became-a-best-selling-author-.html

The 4-Hour Bestseller

In 2007 Tim Ferriss made marketing history by becoming an instant bestselling author on both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal's coveted lists. Prior to the release of his book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, Ferriss was a complete unknown in the publishing world. 

So how did he become an overnight sensation?



The answer is that he didn't. What looks like an overnight sensation to the outside world is actually the product of many months of hard, sustained labor. That is not news to anybody. We all know that publishing a successful book requires work. The question is: What kind of work?

Some kinds of work simply do not pay off. For example, nearly everything you do after your book is published is an uphill battle. Everyone in the business world knows that you have to build interest in a product before it is available, books included.

How did Ferriss do it?
What Tim Ferriss did was revolutionary. He completely ignored the usual marketing channels and went straight to the Internet. By the time his book was released, his name was all over the web on sites that got traffic in the thousands per day. How did he pull it off?

Ferriss went to blogging conferences and hung out with bloggers six months prior to releasing his book. More specifically, he hung out with their wives. Popular bloggers are just as hard to reach as big-name agents. So, to reach them, Ferriss simply shmoozed with their nearest and dearest. And because Ferris was under 30, attractive, and personable, he made an impression on them. Before long, he was the talk of the cybertown. And when his book came out, he continued to be a rage on the Internet, making his own blog just as popular as those of the bloggers he had originally courted.

It was the American Dream come true – hard work, the entrepreneurial spirit, bootstraps, huge success, piles of money, rags-to-riches, overcoming obstacles – all the claptrap that makes good Americans weep at mall movie complexes everywhere.

You can do it, too!
If you don't have the nerve to snuggle up to bloggers' better halves, or to cold-call famous authors and ask them how they achieved success (Ferriss did that as well), you still have the option of building your Internet presence using more subtle techniques.
Six months prior to releasing your book, launch your author website. If you haven't published anything yet, put a brief, interesting bio, and an attractive photo on your home page. You can post a picture of the cover of your forthcoming book and sample chapter. (Only if it is ready for publication. Do not post works in progress.) Start a blog. Write about a topic for which you have some expertise. (It doesn't necessarily have to match the subject of your book.) List your blog on blog directories.Start reading blogs on subjects that are similar to yours. Make comments. List their blogs on your site. Follow them, and they will follow you. (There appears to be no leader in this game.Write guest blogs for sites that get more traffic than yours. (You can re-post them on your own blog afterward.) Write articles for ezines. Build your credentials as an author.If you can get to a bloggers conference, then go ahead. Meeting people in the flesh is still the best way to develop contacts. But, unless you are a dead ringer for Mae West, don't walk up to a blogger and ask if they'd like to come up and see your manuscript sometime. (Ask them to have a drink instead.)

You will have to do some research to find blogs similar to yours. (Use Technorati) And it will take time to keep up with your own blog and everybody else's. But, unless your last name is Obama, you'll just have to roll up your shirtsleeves and get down to it. After all, Timothy Ferriss did it, and all he had was chutzpah.

Sources:

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/how-tim-ferriss-cracked-the-amazon-bestseller-list_b61139
How Tim Ferriss cracked the bestseller list.

http://mixergy.com/tim-ferriss/
How blogs helped Tim Ferriss create a bestseller.

http://nmxlive.com/2013-lv/
New Media Expo, the world's largest blogger conference.

http://writetodone.com/2008/10/20/publishing-20-tim-ferriss-on-using-a-viral-idea-to-create-a-best-seller/
Using a viral idea to create a bestseller.

Arranging Your Own Book Tour

Me, talking to a fan before a reading.
Authors' book tours, at least those sponsored by publishing houses, have become a relic of the past, along with fountain pens, white-out and the proper use of the word “issue.” It is a pity, because there really is no substitute for seeing and hearing an author read from his or her own work. For authors, it is even more of a pity, because meeting people who have enjoyed our work is a real thrill. Webinars, virtual tours, blogs, and all the rest of the vast sea of vicarious contact in which we frequently find ourselves floundering simply do not compare to the shining eyes of a fan.

When my first middle reader novel was published, I knew there would be no tour. So, I scheduled one myself. I did book signings at bookstores, fundraisers, and various book events across the Northeast. I did readings at libraries, schools, and restaurants. I gave talks in public schools. There was no venue too small. On the whole, it was a tiring, time-consuming experience, and I reached very few people in comparison to a single well-placed ad.

And it was well worth it.

Book events draw a select crowd. These are people who love you. You cannot survive without them. They will buy your books, and what is even more important, they will visit your website and blog. They will “like” your Facebook page and send it to everyone they know. The teachers at schools you give (free) presentations to will recommend your book as summer reading. Libraries will put your book in a prominent place. Bookstore owners will display your book in their windows. And each and every event you hold will appear in the local paper, often with a photo. Even if nobody comes (and that never happens), you've achieved a media presence just by holding an author event.

You can post all of these events on your website and Facebook page, accompanied by pictures and testimonials. (Ask for these!) These events are now part of your platform. And if you bring a sign-up sheet to get email addresses of those who attend your events, you can add them to your contact list.

How do you arrange your own book tour? If your book is released in print, call all of the bookstores within a two hour's drive from your home (or as far as you are willing to travel). Offer to do a free reading at their store, as a local author. The owner/s will want to see a press kit, so make sure you have one ready. Let them know how they may order the book. Then arrange a time. Alert the local media.

If you have written a children's or YA book, even an electronic one, contact all the local schools. English teachers will be especially interested, so find out who they are and offer to give a free presentation about the process of writing to their classes. If your books are for an older audience, contact the appropriate instructors and professors at local colleges and universities. (Prepare your lecture in advance.) 

You can also offer to give a free lecture at any institution that is connected with your book's topic. Fundraisers for local charities (especially around Christmas) and public radio drives are great venues. If you participate in a book signing for a public radio drive, your name will be mentioned on the airwaves.

Best of all, if you hold an event, or are invited to one, people will remember you. And that is the definition of fame.

Your New Year's Resolution

There are only a few days left of the old year.  You are already thinking ahead to new goals, new projects, and you are determined to accomplish them. Knowing writers, I can predict what your New Year's resolutions will be:

I will write 1000 words a day (after all, Hemingway did it, and he was a journalist)
I will finish my novel (it's been seven years … )
I will start my novel (it's been ten years … )

And so on.

This year, I am going to make the whole breast-beating, self-flagellating, bound-to-fail experience of New Year's resolutions a lot easier for you. Here's your resolution:

I will research my market.

(My computer has a Big Brother camera on it. I can see the expression on your face.)

Writers don't like marketing and promoting their work. But that's not because it is a venal, distasteful, and ungentlemanly task. It's because we don't know how to do it. Marketing belongs to the business world, not the artistic world. As a writer, you prefer to wear only one hat. As a writer in today's entertainment-driven world, you can't.

Knowing your market – who will buy your book, how many people there are in this group, and how you will reach them – is the key to success. Even if you are lucky enough to get an agent who will sell your work to a publishing house, the first thing he or she will ask you is: What is your market? How many people are in it? How will you reach them? What books compete with your own? How is your book different? Why will people want to buy it? (A tip: The answers to these questions should go in your query letter.)

In order to address these questions (and you must be able to), you need to do some research. Go to Amazon and type in keywords to locate books similar to yours. What is their ranking? Go to a Barnes & Noble. What's on their shelves? (Believe it or not, print publications still matter.) Are you offering something new? Will your book fill a gap?

Who will buy your book? That depends on what you are writing, of course. Let's say you are writing a romance. (Half of all fiction being published today is comprised of romance novels.) Generally speaking, women buy romance novels – more specifically, women who don't have a lot of time. Romance novels are short, therefore your market consists of women who have small children and/or time-consuming jobs and a curtailed sex life.

If you want to reach this market, you have to know where these women go. What websites are they visiting, what blogs do they read, what books do they buy? If you can't answer those questions off the top of your head, go to: http://www.invesp.com/blog-rank/Romance_Novels and take a look.

No matter what you write, there is a market for your work. If you want people to read what you write, spend an hour a day researching who those people are. 
And last, but not least, read books that are designed for entrepreneurs, because that is who you are!

Suggested reading:

One Simple Idea: Turn Your Dreams Into a Licensing Goldmine While Letting Others Do the Work by Stephen Key. Key's book is about licensing ideas for products, so you may not think what he has to say applies to you. Keep in mind that when a publisher picks up your book, you have essentially licensed an idea. Read what Key has to say about marketing, and think about how to apply his methods to your own goals. Go to worldcat.org and type in the title of Key's book. Then, click on “preview this item.” You can read the first 20% of Key's book right there. 

The Grammar Mistake That Will Kill Your Career

"Please step away from the keyboard! Now!!!"
Every writer knows that grammar and spelling errors are unforgivable in a manuscript. That's why we seek outside editors and send our manuscripts to proofreaders. What writers don't realize is that making simple mistakes in an email to an agent, or a query letter, or even on a blog can cost you your career. (You never know who might be reading your blog.)

I'm not talking about spelling the word “precede” wrong. After all, it's the most misspelled word in the English language, and chances are your agent won't know how to spell it either. I am talking about a little word. It's its.

It's is a contraction of “it is.” Its is a possessive (e.g. its teeth.)

An apostrophe in the wrong context is a catastrophe.

A while ago, I took a seminar in grant writing. I was the director of a non-profit at the time, and knowing how to write a grant was essential to the future of my project. The leader of the seminar asked the group if we knew how grantors made their decisions. We replied, “On the merits of our projects.” (Like writers, non-profits believe that good work counts.) She immediately set us straight. “They hold up the first page of each application to the light,” she said. “If they see white-out [this was in the day of typewriters], they throw the entire application away. They repeat that process, going through each page, until they get a pile of applications with no corrections. Those are the ones they read.”

The moral of the story: Don't give anybody an excuse to throw you out. Use your spell check on everything you write, check all your punctuation marks, and watch those apostrophes.

They'll get you every time.

Everything I Did Wrong, Part 3: Writers Are from Venus, Agents Are from Mars

I didn't have an agent for my first book, which, in light of the disastrous contract I signed, was a mistake. So, when I completed a second book I decided to contact one. After reading the manuscript she gave me a call, agreed to represent me, and asked me for the following:

A photograph
A biography
Log lines
Flap copy
A synopsis
A marketing plan
How I intended to reach my prospective audience, and
Whether I knew someone famous, like the Pope, who would endorse my book

I was too embarrassed to admit that I didn't know what half the things on her list were, so I muddled through as best I could. (The Pope would not give me an endorsement, even though my flap copy was nothing short of miraculous.) My ignorance was astonishing, although understandable: I was a writer.

Writers, especially fiction writers, focus on crafting our work. After a long and difficult labor, we give birth to novels. The last thing we need while in the throes of contractions (no pun intended) is for the midwife to ask, “What kind of diapers would you like? Cloth or disposable?” As far as we are concerned, our job is finished when we push out the last line.

This is simply not how the publishing world works. Before contacting an agent, you must not only have a finished work (edited, proof-read, and ready for the printer), you must understand the industry. That means knowing what is going on in the publishing world, knowing what is going on in the book selling world, and knowing what is going on inside your agent's head. In order to do that you must go to your local library and pore through issues of Publisher's Weekly, Writer's Digest, and The Writer. You must read blogs kept by agents and editors in order to familiarize yourself with the lingo of the trade: proposal-to-publish forms, subsidiary rights, and promotion potential. You must become vertically integrated.

Right about now, you are beginning to feel put-upon. Why should you learn everybody else's trade? You have your own. Besides, the publishing industry is complicated, frustrating, and, to put it mildly, embattled. That is why so many writers turn to epublishing. It lures us into its embrace with promises of instant gratification.

The inconvenient truth is that there is no way to avoid the hard work of promotion – which, in turn, requires an understanding of the publishing industry. Although epublishing is rapidly gaining ground, print publishers still have the advantage of pedigree. There is nothing that qualifies you more as an author than to be published by one of the big houses. In order to get a publisher, you need an agent. And in order to get an agent, you must not only be able to write the perfect query letter and shmooze at conferences, you must get a handle on how agents think.

The best way I know of understanding what goes on in the minds of agents is to read their books. Buried somewhere in the musty stacks of your local library is a book written by Michael Larsen called Literary Agents: How to Get and Work with the Right One for You. It was published in 1986 (a year in which you may have been a fetus), but it is still the best exposition of what goes on in an agent's mind that I have ever read. In spite of the passage of decades, and a supposed revolution in publishing, the way agents think has not changed.
Agents expect to have a salable book. What constitutes salable? Anything that can be successfully pitched. Work on your pitch before you contact an agent.
Agents expect you to be “professional.” In the publishing world that means, “Don't take up too much of my time.” If you need to have your hand held, don't contact an agent (yet).
Last, but not least, agents expect you to want to make money. (You'd be surprised how many writers simply want to express themselves!) Agents expect you to convince them “that you harbor a consuming lust for success and that you are irresistibly driven to do whatever it takes to make your books sell.” 
Until you can build up some lust, and can back it up with a plan that demonstrates that you know what to do with it, hold off on contacting an agent. They aren't in the business for love, they are in it for money – and they can't make any if you don't.

Essential reading for understanding how agents think :

Jeff Herman, Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents. (Sourcebooks, 2011)  Read the agents' descriptions of the client from hell. (That's you!)  

Chuck Sambuchino, ed. 2013 Guide to Literary Agents. (Writer's Digest Books, 2012)
Actually, any year of this publication will be sufficient. Make sure you read the sections on advice to writers (from agents).

Michael Larsen. Literary Agents: How to Get and Work with the Right One for You. (J. Wiley, 1986.)

The updated edition of Larsen's book, How to Get a Literary Agent (Sourcebooks, 2006), has more information, but reveals less of the inner workings of the Martian mind


First posted on Blogging Authors 12/19/12: http://www.bloggingauthors.com/

Why Google Adwords is (and isn't) a Waste of Time

Whenever you do a Google search, you will notice the top and bottom entries are ads. Google Adwords, an advertising tool created by Google, allows anybody to post an ad – for a price. The price is determined by how much you are willing to pay for someone to click on your ad. This is known as pay-per-click advertising, and is Google's main source of revenue.


It's ingenious, really, when you think about it. Advertisers are willing to take a gamble that people who click on their ad are interested enough to purchase a product. And, even if they don't click, thousands of people have at least seen the ad. All the better if it includes an eye-catching picture.

When Hostmonster offered me a free $100 of Adwords for my new website (which was doubled by joining Linkedin), I jumped at the chance. I called Google Adwords, and an obliging representative posted several attractive ads for my book. A few days later, another helpful representative called and, for an hour and a half, tutored me in all the details of how to track my campaign – daily budget, click-through rate (CTR, the percentage of people clicking after viewing your ad), the success of differently phrased ads, keywords, and many more sources of statistics.

It was complicated. It was taxing. And it was a completely inefficient way to market a book.

Time for some stats. My CTR (click-through rate) was .02%, which means that of the 200,000 times my ad appeared on Google, only twenty people clicked on it. Even Google admitted that this was an abysmal CTR. Nonetheless, I persisted. Twenty people was still twenty people after all. However, when I looked at my Google Analytics stats, I found a 50% bounce rate. That meant that of the twenty people actually visiting the site, half of them left immediately. Only ten people stayed long enough to read anything. Of those ten, one bought the book.

I was delighted that one person had bought the book. But, if I had paid for those ads, it would have cost me $200 to sell a book worth $2.99 (of which I made $2.10). By anybody's reckoning that's a waste of money. In fact, unless you sell a product that costs over $200, it would be a waste of money for anyone to use Google Adwords. Most ads receive an average of 200 clicks before someone actually purchases a product. (Which means I was actually doing pretty good with my one sale.)

So, why would any sane writer want to promote a book on Google Adwords? Provided you don't pay for it, Google Adwords is an excellent way of judging which buzz words the public will respond to. (As it turned out, the ad that got the most clicks was the only one I had written myself.) Knowing what the public will respond to is quite important when you are writing your press release, query letters, and for all your promotional activities.

This page will help you to find keywords that are high, medium and low competition. (Your competition determines how much you will pay for clicks. The lower the competition, the less you pay.) But, here's the “beauty part.” This page tells you how many people searched those key words globally and locally. The more people who search on a given keyword or phrase, the more worth it has as a promotional tool. (But examine those keywords carefully; some are too vague to be useful.)

https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__c=1000000000&__u=1000000000&ideaRequest&defaultView=2

You can also use this tool to name a website, or a blog – or even a book!

Thank you, Google.

Resources:
http://blog.monitor.us/2012/05/google-adwords/

This article will give you an idea of how complex a Google Adwords campaign really can be. If you can make it half way through this explanation, I will give you a prize. (Please don't take me up on that.)